This was a 3rd attempt to finally get into the Castlevania series and it’s still not clicking at all. I save scummed through some of the bosses of the first and 3rd games and while I liked the art direction and music, I really didn’t care for boss and level design for the most part. Castlevania IV has more freedom in its mechanics, but I still like next to nothing about its actual level design, I don’t care for the bosses, and I thought the music wasn’t quite as memorable as 1 or 3

I stopped playing at stage 8 or so because I just wasn’t having any fun whatsoever playing through this

I think this game is not spectacular. The combat is janky, especially during boss fights, the timer can be annoying, and the story is not exactly Oscar-worthy. All that being said, this game, much like Resident Evil 5, becomes amazing with a co-op partner. Suddenly the jank goes from being incredibly irritating solo to being genuinely hilarious, at least in my experience.

One of my best memories with this game are a friend of mine giving me spoiled food as healing in the middle of a boss fight, leading me to get absolutely destroyed by a psycho. Another one I have is us triggering a boss fight on accident and having to run across that section of the mall into a bathroom and keep opening and closing the door to take little shots at the boss. With how many timed events are around the map, anytime we screwed up a run, we would see something completely different in the next run if we tried a different route, and I really appreciated that becaise it kept the game feeling fresh.

It's funny because I strongly dislike the single-player-only first installment in the franchise because, but I think the co-op angle for this one is basically the perfect scenario for this type of game.

The level design is great for the most part, and I like the aesthetics a lot. That being said, the invasion mechanic is pretty obnoxious and sets the game back a bit. Having to go hack a signal to unlock exits after I killed the invader just feels like a waste of time. The writing can be a little annoying at times, as well and I think the endings are pretty bad

I still really like it, and it does a lot of things well, but I do wish there was more than one way to kill all the visionaries in a day.

I’ve never played a game that’s as miserable as Drakengard. The gameplay is horrible, the repetition is insane, the OST will absolutely drive you crazy, and the requirements to get all weapons are downright stupid.

I struggle to really understand how I feel about this. It’s a totally joyless video game for the most part. Some dragon stages are okay at first, but they still aren’t the best. The characters being not great people is interesting, but I just don’t have much to think about any of them to be totally honest. They lack a lot of the depth you’d expect to see from such a troubled cast, so a lot of it often comes off as “God damn, these people suck” and not much else. Even the more “morally good” characters are often irritating because of the voice acting direction. I honestly wasn’t all that impressed by the larger narrative either and I really don’t feel like it got to any meaningful point beyond the core theme of the game. The moment to moment narrative I just don’t really care all that much for, but again, it’s certainly different. I just couldn’t get into it

It’s rare that a game so unenjoyable doesn’t have any major bugs. The game is finished, has tons of content, multiple endings, what felt like a larger OST, and a mostly complete vision. Most everything feels deliberate. The combat functions fine with frame rate drops in later areas. It just sucks. I think it’s the combination of all the garbage together makes Drakengard at the very least wholly unique. Also Ending E being the last ending is just very funny